Now you can face Dale Steyn's bouncer or Malinga's yorkers and experience the edgy moments of IPL at the click of a button.

IPL fever has entered the gaming world with added vigour. Be it smartphones or social networking sites – the annual cricket extravaganza has transcended across different platforms.

‘IPL Cricket Fever' - the IPL Season 5 game launched by UTV Indiagames tries to simulate the actual on-ground IPL. The basic version of the game is free and available on Android, iOS and Java platforms. Just like this season's IPL, it has nine official teams and all the favourite stars of the game from Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid to Kevin Pollard and AB de Villiers.

The DLF IPL 2012 app for Android device gives records, live scores and schedules. iPhone has an app called DugOut which has an added advantage of verbal score updates and detailed scoreboards with a bit of cricket trivia.

Several gaming companies have brought out IPL-based applications for specific teams. For instance, Zapak has developed a Web-based application for Kolkata Knight Riders.

Kingfisher introduced apps for social networking sites like Facebook for the cricket season. “An interactive Facebook application - Good Times Jackpot is a new application introduced this year. It has an iPad version and a Web-based version. The user base on social networking platform is a much broader,” said Mr Nikhil Gupta, Managing Partner, 22 feet, the company that developed the application.

The ‘IPL 2012 fixtures' application is also being widely spoken about in the social media.

“Through the official DLF IPL 2012 application on my Android device, I can view past records, live scores and even see the schedules on the go. News articles can also be viewed through the app,” said Mr Akshay Bhat, Account Strategist, Google.

The Android marketplace has been flooded with hundreds of IPL apps by various developers. However, despite being available free of cost, users are expressing caution while downloading these apps on their smartphones. It is important to download a stable app which will not affect phone performance, say users.

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